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If your dreams don’t scare you, then they are not big enough!

As I sit at my desk in my home town Bournemouth,UK, I look out the window and all I see is rain, wind and a rather wet day from this window. Then I look and find my inspirational folder on my computer and look at the images I have placed in there by other photographers, a lot of them are via the Matador network and come up on my Facebook pages on a daily basis.

I look a the photographs and think why am I not in these exotic places photographing these wonderful colours that our planet has to offer? The only conclusion I come to is the lack of money for the trip I really want to do. The motivation is there but the funds are sadly lacking. So I think how can I raise the funds to do what I want to, well as a start I have set up my own photo Library at www.imagesfromaroundtheworld.com and I want to live up to the name of the web site, I have done some preliminary travel in Thailand and Malaysia over the past few years, but what was going to be a 5 month holiday turned into a 19 month adventure, but the latter part of that trip was down to survival instead of enjoying what these countries have to offer most of the time.

Yes, I took a number of risks on the money front as I had planned 5 months worth of travel and I still do not know the real sequence of events that came into making this a much longer trip than I planned. Looking back I did not have any real plan for the initial trrip, the basic idea was to got to Bangkok, then to Phuket in Thailand to find a beach, but after that I had nothing in my mind on where to go or what to do etc.

I gladly went along with some friends I met in Thailand, by going to the beach and generally hanging out with all kinds of people. Then I went to Penang, Malaysia and found Nirvana in the terms of food and eventually good friends along the way. I happily accepted the terms that the world gave me, in the form of friendship, food and peace when I really needed it. I learn’t a lot of things on that trip, how kind the locals can be even if you are only going for a coffee in a local shop, they greet you as a long lost friend and treat you as such and always with a smile!!

All I know is when the day of the return flight was upon me and I was laying in bed (when I should have been at the airport) it was a wonderful decision not to go back to the UK, as I had nothing to go back for and that was a truly wonderful moment in my life, that I was free of the 9-5 daily grind, luckily I had just secured some money and was set up for at least the next month and that was enough for me at present!

I miss those times when I can sit and watch the world go by at a slower and more peaceful pace for life, nothing was done in a hurry and no one expected you to do that right now, but in your own time. The only things you had to be on time for was transport when you wanted to move to the next town or country, other from that everything was OK, come around 12 so a few minutes before or after was OK, no one was clock watching you which makes a big change to your life compared to the UK and other westernised countries. There was no hurry to woof down your food or coffee, you did not need to rush even general shopping as no one was in a real hurry and you were not carried along by the rush of daily life.

On that note, why are we packing so much into our very short free time?, when instead of doing 5 things quickly, we could do one thing and enjoy it more. Do you feel short changed when you have not done a lot in your spare time?. What do you feel like when you have done one thing instead of 5 in that afternoon? – is it necessary to do all the things? Or can you combine these things differently? – Only you can answer this and I believe you can lead a more relaxed life compared to what you are doing at present.

My goal is to raise enough money and earn some money via my web site along the way, so that I am on a mission not to come back to the UK for a long time if ever, when I have said this to my friends they look at me and say I am mad, yes a little, but I do not have any real ties to the UK, where as they have ties and cannot see beyond them, they are not willing to make a real leap of faith, as for example in 2008 relocated to France basically on a whim, and with little money, my friend Ian who had much more money and could do it better than me, said I could not do what you are doing – “I do not have the guts”, was his response and he was in the same position as me with no real ties, but he did not want to leave the comfort of a secure job, life etc, to go out and see the world. Which is a shame, but later I did hear that the company he worked for sent him to Canada for some time, and perhaps that was the catalyst he needed to go and explore the world, but I have doubt he has done anything more exciting than that.

So what are your goals for your current life?, do you have a bucket list yet, if not why not?, I have had a bucket list of sorts since around 1998 and I have achieve around 40-50% of the goals on it, I need to revisit my current one to see what I have done in the past year.

I am looking for easy ways to raise some money via the internet, as working for a company the current pay is so poor that after taxes, travel and basic living expenses and all the rest etc. Working for any company it would take me many years to save the money to do what I really want to do, it’s an unrealistic. So essentially I need to raise some capital to start the trip and then somehow generate a income of around £500-800 per month to fund my travels. As I think of ways to do this, I am thinking of putting together photography guides, but as there are so many free ones out there, why will they buy mine if I am going to charge them for each subject, mmm here is my dilemma, people can get free photographs on the internet, so why buy mine?, this is where the internet is killing talent of a lot of people, photographers, journalists, web designer and a lot of more professions aside,the free side of the internet is Killing a lot of peoples business, and we have to find other revenue streams to make ends meet.

We never had to do this in the past, we found some overtime to pay for that item we needed or sold a few items at home to generate a little extra cash, it was done on a low key basis, we never complained about the money going out as we do today. As those small revenue streams we used to have are now but all but gone, thanks to the internet and all these people offering free stuff – The question is how do these people live when they give away their stuff for free, Yes there are some small adverts on their web sites, but can that generate enough cash to live on, when the click through rates range from £0.01 to £1.50 or more, you need a lot of visitors to generate even a basic wage, so what are people living on?. Credit I presume and eventually that has to be paid back doesn’t it??

So come along and visit my web site at www.imagesfromaroundtheworld.com and see if you can buy a photo or two to help me along in my dream of getting out there and doing what the world wants me to do and not an employer telling me what to do for a pittance of a wage.

Enjoy life , Make changes you will not regret it

Michael

I found this on the internet somewhere I would love to credit the photographer and the quote, but cannot – Sorry